Want to know the best Walter Brennan movies? How about the worst Walter Brennan movies? Curious about Walter Brennan’s box office grosses or which Walter Brennan movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Walter Brennan movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Walter Brennan (1894-1974) is the only person in the history of people to win 3 Best Supporting Actor Oscars®. Brennan specialized in playing cantankerous old men. He appeared in some of the greatest westerns ever made: 1940’s The Westerner, 1946’s My Darling Clementine, 1948’s Red River and 1959’s Rio Bravo. Not to say all of Brennan’s movies were westerns….as he also appeared in many other non-western classics: 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein, 1941’s Meet John Doe, 1941’s Sergeant York, 1942’s The Pride of the Yankees, 1946’s To Have And Have Not and 1969’s Support Your Local Sheriff.
His IMDb page shows 244 acting credits from 1925-1975. This page ranks Walter Brennan movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, cameos and movies not released in North America were not included in the rankings.
Walter Brennan Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Walter Brennan Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Walter Brennan movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Walter Brennan movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Walter Brennan movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Walter Brennan movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Walter Brennan movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Walter Brennan movie won.
- Sort Walter Brennan movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
Check Out Steve’s Walter Brennan You Tube Video
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
Tried a character actor but Walter has only 40 though he worked with some people a number of times.
At Gunpoint (1955) – Dorothy Malone
Baby Face (1933) – John Wayne
Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) – Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin, Dean Jagger, Spencer Tracy
Barbary Coast (1935) – David Niven
Best of the Badmen (1951) – Claire Trevor
Cross Country Cruise (1934) – Jane Darwell
Dakota (1945) – John Wayne
Driftwood (1947) – Dean Jagger
Fury (1936) – Spencer Tracy
Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935) – Alice Brady
Good Dame (1934) – Fredric March
Good-Bye, My Lady (1956) – Sidney Poitier
How the West Was Won (1962) – Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, John Wayne, James Stewart, Karl Malden, Spencer Tracy
Kentucky (1938) – Loretta Young
King for a Night (1933) – Jane Darwell
King of Jazz (1930) – Bing Crosby
Law and Order (1932) – Walter Huston
Meet John Doe (1941) – Gary Cooper
Metropolitan (1935) – Alice Brady
My Darling Clementine (1946) – Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell
Northwest Passage (1940) – Spencer Tracy
Parachute Jumper (1933) – Bette Davis
Red River (1948) – Shelley Winters, John Wayne
Rio Bravo (1959) – John Wayne
Riptide (1934) – Norma Shearer
Sergeant York (1941) – Gary Cooper, Gig Young
Sing, Sinner, Sing (1933) – Paul Lukas
Stand By for Action (1942) – Charles Laughton
Stanley and Livingstone (1939) – Charles Coburn, Spencer Tracy
Surrender (1950) – Jane Darwell
Swamp Water (1941) – Anne Baxter, Walter Huston
Task Force (1949) – Edmond O’Brien, Gary Cooper
Texas Cyclone (1932) – John Wayne
The Buccaneer (1938) – Anthony Quinn, Fredric March
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938) – Gary Cooper
The Far Country (1954) – James Stewart
The Last Will and Testament of Tom Smith (1943) – Lionel Barrymore
The Moon’s Our Home (1936) – Henry Fonda
The North Star (1943) – Dean Jagger, Anne Baxter, Walter Huston
The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968) – Goldie Hawn
The Oscar (1966) – Ernest Borgnine, Broderick Crawford, James Dunn
The Pride of the Yankees (1942) – Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright
The Princess and the Pirate (1944) – Bing Crosby, Victor Mclaglen
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) – Ginger Rogers
The Wedding Night (1935) – Gary Cooper
The Westerner (1940) – Gary Cooper
To Have and Have Not (1944) – Humphrey Bogart
Two-Fisted Law (1932) – John Wayne
West Point of the Air (1935) – Wallace Beery
Hey Dan….I thought that would be much higher….probably his age and the fact that Oscars were just getting started hurt his tally. Still he was active 40 years after the Oscars were born. The way my brain works when it comes to numbers….I had to look up Jane Darwell birth year….1879 and realizing people like Goldie Hawn and Sidney Poitier are still around in 2016….represents 137 years that Brennan is in a weird way connected to. That is a lot of years. Thanks for the Brennan Oscar total. It is greatly appreciated.
Love his voice. It always brings a smile to me when I hear it in a movie.
Hey Tamrah….he had a great voice. Thanks for stopping by.
You should hear his albums,
The Touch of theMaster’s Hand, Old Rivers, Silent Night, Conversation with a Mule, The Green Green Valley (many more)
Hey Roger…wow…..I know idea he had that many records….actually I did not know he had any. Thanks for opening my eyes to that information.
Hi, Bruce.
I’ve sent you an email. Now that I have new laptop I don’t have to borrow anybody’s computer and therefore can maybe start getting caught up slowly. I am not wanting to write short comments regarding names I know well/seen a lot.
Since Walter Brennan is next among individual names of classic Hollywood according to Newest pages list, I will focus on him. I skipped him before to go to Betty Grable because hers was basically finished and therefore seemed the most logical. Now that time is no longer an issue for me, I am returning to chronologically created pages.
I love Walter Brennan and am always happy to see him in a picture.
Of the 40 movies you have listed:
The highest ranked movie I have seen is Sgt. York at number 1. I have seen it once. It was a famous title I crossed off of my list of films to see. However, I will not likely watch it more than once.
The highest ranked movie I have never seen is Kentucky at number 8. When I will see that I am not sure as there are only a handful of movies where I can put up with Loretta Young-mostly decided by my interest in her co-stars in a film. If you do a page on her, I might explain. But this is a page on Walter.
The lowest ranked film I have seen is Banjo on my Knee at number 38.
The movie I saw the most recently for the first time is Along the Great Divide when TCM aired Kirk Douglas movies on his birthday. It isn’t one I am likely to watch a second time.
Overall rankings:
I have seen 8 of the top 10 movies
I have seen 17 of the top 20 movies.
I have seen 21 of the top 30 movies
I have seen 24 movies overall.
My favourite Walter Brennan movies are as follows:
To Have and Have Not
Support Your local Sheriff
Bad Day at Black Rock
The Westerner
The Bride of Frankenstein
Cheers,
Flora
Hey Flora.
1. That is great news about your new laptop….I guess you were good this year….lol.
2. Tally count….and the winner is Flora with 24…with me and Steve tied for 2nd with 17.
3. Walter was a request that I was avoiding for many a moon (the amount of movies was hard to get over and just start doing the page)…..but after seeing a few other Brennan websites…I figured a incomplete UMR page was still way better than the ones currently out there.
4. Kentucky is one hard movie to find. One of my goals is see all the major Oscar winners…Best Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor & Actress, Best Picture and Best Director….of the over 500 movies I have seen all of them except for 15….and Kentucky is one of those 15.
5. Loretta Young would be a good subject. Pretty sure I have a pretty good amount of her movies already complete.
6. It does not sound good for Along The Great Divide…I will avoid that one.
7. Your %…..80%, 85% and only 35% of the bottom 20….seems the cream rose to the top.
8. I have seen all 5 of your Top 5…and I agree they are all great movies…I think Red River and Rio Bravo would bump out Bad Day At Black Rock on my Top 5.
9. As always…thanks for checking out my latest page….even if it is not complete.
Bruce there are over 200 Walter Brennan films listed at IMDB. I don’t envy you attempting to sift thru all of those, ranking and rating the best. 🙂
I’ve seen 17 of the 40 films you’ve currently got listed, I noticed you’re still working on this page. At first glance you seem to have gathered up all the famous films he’s appeared in, I can’t think of any you might have missed.
Favorite Brennan films include Red River, Rio Bravo, To Have and Have Not, Bad Day at Black Rock, Support Your Local Sheriff and The Princess and the Pirate with Bob Hope.
A nice tribute to one of Hollywood’s greatest and best loved character actors. Voted Up!
Hey Steve…..I think most of the missing movies would fall into the bit roles (pre 1936)….as Brennan was king of the extras before finally getting his big break. I would say there are about 20 more I would like to include….but like you say I got most of his famous films in this page. My tally count is…..counting…..is 17….so we are tied. I like your favorite Brennan movies too. I just recently saw The Princess and the Pirate….I did not realize Brennan was in the movie until the end…..his character looked so old…I did not recognize him at first. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
You’ve been busy.
Hey Dan…..I set a record for most pages in a month….and it is still possible I can squeeze two more out before the new year.